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Syracuse police use of Tasers comes under scrutiny

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Video from a security camera on a Centro bus on May 3 shows Brad Hulett being dragged along the pavement by a police officer after the officer hit him with a Taser for refusing to sit or get off the bus.
(Provided photo)

Joseph Lipari, director of the city's Citizen Review Board, compared Syracuse's policy on the use of electronic control devices with that of police in Las Vegas. That agency's policy was established last year in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Las Vegas policy says the devices "should not be used when the resistance is solely passive or active," but only when the resistance becomes aggressive, Lipari told the committee.

That element seems to be relevant in the case of Brad Hulett, who was shown getting hit by police with a Taser in a video taken by a security camera on a Centro bus in May.

The video shows Hulett refusing a bus driver's request to sit down, then the commands of two police officers to sit or get off the bus.

"I've watched that video over and over," Sally Johnston, president of Disabled in Action of Greater Syracuse, told the council members. "I kept asking myself, 'Why? Why did this happen?' This man did nothing wrong... He not only was tasered twice. He was dragged off the bus, dragged down the street, broke his hip. What kind of behavior is this?"

Police administrators weren't on hand to give any answers. Chief Frank Fowler told the committee chairman, Jake Barrett, that no one from his department could comment because Hulett has filed a notice saying he plans to sue.

Some of the council members were miffed by the absence of police administrators, members of Mayor Stephanie Miner's office and the Corporation Counsel's Office.

"If we called a meeting to discuss the color of paint in this room, the mayor's office would have someone here," Councilor Lance Denno said. "I'm stunned. Why would they boycott such an important meeting?"

Fowler did answer a few written questions submitted by one of the councilors, Barrett said. In one response, the chief said, "We feel our existing policy on Tasers is a good one."

The department's internal review of the incident found the officers were justified in using the Taser.

Barrett said Fowler invited the councilors to come to his office to talk about the case and to view the full videotape from the bus, "not just the quick version that you've seen on television."

Hulett and his lawyer, Rick Guy, attended the meeting. Afterward, Guy said he didn't see how the full videotape would add anything to the discussion. If Fowler has more video that Guy has not seen, the city was remiss in not turning it over to him, Guy said.

Lipari would not go so far as to call Syracuse's Taser policy inadequate. But he cited the limitations of it in comparison to Las Vegas'. Along with not prohibiting Tasers on people who are only passively resisting, the Syracuse policy does not mention the need for officers to try to de-escalate a situation before using a Taser, Lipari said.

"Nowhere in the Syracuse policy does it discuss de-escalation," he said. "That's the idea that the way an officer approaches a scene, the tone that they use, can decrease the likelihood of force being used."

Barrie Gewanter, director of the local chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the committee that the officers in Hulett's case appeared to be in violation of the policy even as it's written.

"That use of a Taser is suspect," she said, citing a section of the Syracuse policy that says officers should only use a Taser in situations where a person presents a risk of injury to himself, the officers or someone else.

"I saw an individual with a intellectual disability given commands instead of explanations...and I saw absolutely no risk of physical injury," Gewanter said. "And the Taser was used."

Jeff Piedmonte, president of the Syracuse Police Benevolent Association, told the councilors he was irritated by some of their comments.

Even if the Taser policy doesn't say it, officers are trained in the ways that Lipari cited in the Las Vegas policy, Piedmonte said. Syracuse police are trained to follow a "use of force continuum" that Lipari referred to from the Las Vegas policy, Piedmonte said.

"When the resistance escalates, our use of force escalates," said Piedmonte, who said he was not speaking for the police administration. "It's hard for me to grasp that you guys don't think that that's what we're trained in and what we're supposed to be doing.

"Nobody comes to work to use force," Piedmonte said. "Nobody comes to work to shoot anybody. It's not what we want to do when we come to work."

He said he was insulted by some comments from Councilor Khalid Bey.

Bey had said he was disturbed over the Taser issue, and that "there's a need to disrupt the culture here, a culture that's probably been around for years."

"There are too many cases where people who might have said the wrong thing to an officer that he didn't like," Bey said. "It's not a crime to be irate...'Officer, why did you pull me over?' And people have taken a beating for that."

The Centro video of Hulett shows the officers dragging him off the bus, then dragging him again, by his foot, about 10 feet along the pavement.

Hulett was charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. He had surgery at Upstate University Medical Center May 4 to put three pins in his broken hip, according to medical records.

Although police reports say the officers told Hulett he was going to be arrested before he was hit with the Taser, those statements are not audible in the video.

The bus driver said in a report that he wanted Hulett to sit down for safety reasons.

Hulett is disabled, and has said he needed to stand because he has two herniated discs from a car accident that make it difficult to sit down on buses.

He suffered brain damage in 1991 after he was struck by two trains.

At the end of the committee meeting, Barrett said he hoped for a "refinement of policy" regarding Tasers.